1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to processing environments, and more particularly to processing memory requests in multi-processor systems.
2. Background
Some graphics processing systems include multiple processing units, e.g., a central processing unit (CPU) that assigns some graphics processing tasks to one or more graphics processing units (CPUs). For example, the CPU can assign rendering tasks to one or more GPUs.
In some systems, the CPU and each of the GPUs each have their own associated memory. For example, in a system having a CPU and a GPU, the CPU can be coupled to a system memory and the GPU can be coupled to a local memory. The system memory can include a coherent memory. However, in many systems, accesses to the GPU local memory are not coherent. When coherency is required, then, software may have to be used to ensure coherency, creating a performance overhead.
What is needed, then, are methods and systems that allow for coherent accesses of the CPU's local memory without using software to ensure coherency.